2008-12-20 | Ship Spotting

I’m a little lukewarm on this solution.

not sure I get this logo…i see the binoculars…but am I supposed to see something in the negative space?

Yes. There is a ship in the lower part.

@ Niki Brown, yeah inside the binoculars is a silhouette of a boat.
Nice logo, but not too hot though.

In between the binoculars there is a small ship resting on the water… Notice the two pipes, typical of those found on large boats.

I also see a rook from a chessboard and a lego, but that’s just me.

A friend of mine, who never comments on blogs looked at it and said, “I see two male electrical plugs trying to work things out … not going to happen!!”

lol! I see the plugs too now!! (And then the ships disappeared heh)

I see two man boxing…

When I first saw this I saw the two men boxing as well. Then I saw the binoculars, next the ship, the the plugs, and then the chess piece and the legos.

I also saw two men boxing first. Then the binoculars. Then the ship, but it would have never jumped out at me. I like the cleverness behind it, but overall its just ok.

aghhhh what a mess. Great concept but clearly needs two or three more rounds of development to clear up the message and the graphic needs to be more contempory.

^ I think it’s good to have a healthy and light hearted discussion about a logo, but to call someone’s work “a mess” is simply bad manners.

I was once mentored by a designer who had done marketing work for Coca Cola, a company whose products are universally recognizable.

She taught me that you should never attack or insult a designer’s work. Instead, you should only give constructive advice, and you should also never say anything that could be hurtful. No good can come of that.

If you’re hurting someone’s feelings, you’re not doing a very good job as a critic. There is a helpful and friendly way to say everything.

When you have something negative to say, you should counter with positive recommendations on how something can be improved. Remove negative terms from your vocabulary and replace them with helpful terms.

Saying something needs “two or three more rounds” gets you nowhere. It is not helpful, it is not intelligent or insightful. You’re really just embarrassing yourself.

Has a lot of different views to it! Plugs, ship, binoculars, 2 guys boxing! WooWoow

Kevin,
You’re right, allow me to clarify.
I was referring to what everyone’s interpretation of the logo was and can see how it could be read differently.
Upon reflection it was a poor choice of words…

To re-explain…by two or three more rounds i mean, i believe that the concept of using negative space is interesting in brands and is starting to work well here but as illustrated in the comments it needs some further development to tighten the message, i.e. two or three more rounds of changes…

Further to your point re feelings being hurt i can understand your critique of my comments for not being useful, (fair point i hope my explanation cleared that up) certainly wasn’t my intention to tear anyones designs apart, but we are all grown ups we should be able to take it…and after having quickly reviewed “Fogra’s” work i can see he/she is clearly a well experienced designer who hopefully saw through the clumsy wording of my throwaway comment or didn’t read it at all.

This is a prime example of how written communication can easily be taken out of context.

Kevin,
Not all criticism can be perfectly constructive or constructed, and while calling it a “mess” might have been a comment best left inside Mitch’s head, suggesting two or three more rounds of revisions is perfectly reasonable advice. Designers, like anyone working publicly in a creative field, make ourselves vulnerable, on a personal level. We do so by choice. If a designer can’t take some blunt criticism, they should not be submitting work to showcase/review sites such as this. Anyway…

I only ended up seeing the ship because I knew I was supposed to be seeing something. It took a few seconds. And when I did see it, it didn’t strike me a particularly lifelike ship. The frustrating part is that this logo could have worked quite well – there’s no reason why the ship couldn’t look better and the binoculars slightly less intrusive.

A good start would be simplifying the relative complexity of the eyepieces, and perhaps eliminating the reflected chimney stacks.

I agree with QF regarding flattening out the top of the + in the center — that would make the smokestacks of the ship better seen. Also, to give it a more modern feel, round out some of the flattened joints.. or maybe round out just the ship to make it stick out more..

It is a neat concept though, and even the designer noted that it needed work, so it’s obviously not a finished product as is. I’d love to see it again after a few revisions.

Wow! I was really surprised to see my logo on here. It was just a quick concept thrown together without too much thought really. Thanks to everyone for their honest feedback too though. I do realise that the overall concept doesn’t work especially when the ship isn’t completely obvious. Thanks Kevin for your support. I take no offense from Mitch’s comment either.

Kind Regards,

Sean O’Grady (Fogra)

ha ha, deja vu! This looks incredibly similar to an early concept for a logo I just finished. Even down to the name and industry. http://tinyurl.com/9kqrvv Some people saw a boat in the negative space, another a sand bucket, etc. Overall we decided the logo wasn’t that effective and went another direction.

I like it. For a little while I was wondering if both part of the binocular were supposed to represent “S” back to back but that’s a bit far.

I never saw two men boxing thou. I saw binoculars and a ship and then I started reading.

Give this logo some developpement time and it will be great!